AGENCY IN THE ZONE

January 4th, 2023

I might just write about initiating derangement (see the last post) until I’ve done it. Today I got a lot more done than yesterday. And most importantly I actually did some meaty, schleppy stuff - meaning, stuff that needs to get done but which the homunculus in me has been whining and pouting about.

This is a coding project, and for the first time I’m using chatGPT and GitHub’s CoPilot AI’s to help me in the process. What an incredible difference it is when those two tools are available.

I’ve worked with GPT-3 before. The Tinkered Thinking post called “What is GPT-3” which attempts to explain GPT-3 in layman’s terms made it to the front page of Hacker News back in the day. I wrote and recorded a few posts that were collaborative writing exercises with GPT-3, including one fictional story, and I even built a GPT-3 app called The Tinkered Question, which did a remarkably good job of generating questions based on user input. The project couldn’t be monetized so it was sunset.

Now GPT is back in this shockingly quick chatGPT form and it’s knowledge.. at least when applied to coding is shocking and refreshing. 

There’s the saying in the tech world that a full stack developer is always a little rusty on… everything. For the layman, what this means is - if a coder knows how to build a complete project from start to finish, including all the stuff a user sees and how that stuff works all the way back to the design of the database and how to host the whole monstrosity on a server - that is a full stack developer. And it requires facility in a number of coding languages and how they communicate with one another.  And the original point is that since they are a jack of all trades, their lack of mastery means that they likely can’t remember how to do something when the task comes up even though they’ve done something like it before. Traditionally this means googling and going “ohhh yea.” But googling is a pain. A coder often opens a bunch of links on google and then quickly scans each one until something familiar or promising sticks out. 

ChatGPT really changes this whole work structure. Instead of googling what a Django/Python database model needs to look like, or hell, just looking at some that I’ve already written, I simply asked chatGPT:

Can you write me a custom Django model that has all of these attributes? And then I listed those attributes and clicked enter.

Boom, It spit out exactly what I needed in no time. This I legit just copy and pasted into my own code base and it works. But the use of this sucker is better than that. When I wasn’t sure how an aspect of Django worked in terms of structure I just asked chatGPT and it gave me a very easy to understand answer.

CoPilot is the other AI tool. And it’s a lot like autocomplete on steroids. It tries to guess what you are going to code and if it’s correct, tap the tab button and boom. For example I might start writing a function called calculateTimeBetweenDates and given that this sort of function is fairly common and easy to understand, CoPilot can instantly fill in exactly what the function is supposed to look like.

It’s difficult to describe just how.. smooth the work went today. It was as if all the most uninteresting sticking points of the work have been lifted. Being able to actually work faster makes everything else less distracting. Which is a strange point to realize. Is it in the lulls of work that we get distracted? When we get stuck and we’re not entirely sure what to do, or we know what to do, but it’s just going to require something tedious and boring?

One has to wonder: what’s the relationship between level of agency and distraction?

If you have a low-level of agency, meaning: you don’t know what to do, or you don’t know how to do it… are you more likely to get distracted? This sort of circumstance isn’t just boring, it’s aggravating, and confusing.

Whereas, consider the reverse: if you know what to do and how to do it, and you are very well versed in the task at hand, are you more or less likely to get distracted? 

Being In the Zone is perhaps a function of agency more than anything else. It’s somewhat.. impossible to be in the zone while learning something new. That’s probably fair to say. Low agency because it’s new, means no chance of being in the zone.

But what about learning as the task? Is it possible to be in the zone of learning?

First instinct here is that it’s all about having high agency when it comes to emotional regulation. Can confusion and aggravation be redirected to fuel curiosity? High agency in this meta-task might just make it possible to be in the zone while learning. 

Interesting tangent aside, this is what those AI tools seemed to do: it was far easier to get in the zone. These tools increased agency by addressing two important issues: hazy memory as applied to how to do something or how something should look, and syntax.  The first is just that jack-of-all-trades full stack developer problem. The syntax problem is just a subset. CoPilot is like Grammerly but a Grammerly that can also write your essay for you once it figures out what you’re talking about.

Regardless, it seems, and certainly feels like I’m one step closer to a proper and productive derangement.

INITIATE DERANGEMENT

January 3rd, 2023

One concept explored on this blog is the idea of Rivalnyms. These are words or word pairs that in short seem like synonyms from one perspective and antonyms from another. A few examples are stubborn vs. determined, or Influence vs. Manipulation, or Loneliness vs Solitude. Both words in effect are two sides of the same coin, or concept. Their main difference is that one is connotatively positive and one is negative. We have these word choices for single concepts in order to flavor it with our emotion or opinion. If you approve of someone’s efforts you call them determined. If you disapprove, you might call them stubborn. It’s not an exact science, but that’s the thing with language: it’s a shifting ground of nuance. So the idea of a Rivalnym is more to point out the emotive way we conjugate our meaning when we say things or categorize them.

This sort of double-edge is present everywhere and culture is plastered with it. It’s perhaps controversial to say but much mental illness may have been beneficial in past cultural circumstances. Reading any ancient religious text with a secular mindset, for example, might make a person wonder if a schizophrenic may have been hailed as a prophet back in those times. Either the divine acts that people saw back then cease to occur today, or perhaps we just label the people who still see them a bit differently… This is the dark side of the double-edge I’m trying to point at.

A more positive version might be everyone’s obsession with “flow state”. This is the hallowed state of productivity that everyone is constantly trying to induce, experience, leverage and bask in. But a flow state is a little nutty. I have experienced the flow state many times, with many projects and endeavors, and on a very practical level I have to say: it’s absolutely horrible for your sleep. Countless times I’ve worked single-mindedly straight through the night only to be annoyingly distracted by a weird and unexpected brightness coming through the window. It’s only then that I realize I’ve accidentally pulled an all-nighter. 

There’s something…downright manic about a flow state. At least in my experience the normal person I am seems to get swallowed whole by this completely other state of being. Tiredness, hunger… it’s as though these things cower in the corner of my being, afraid to disturb the raging beast hellbent at the controls of my person, charging towards that single point of success distantly imagined. The best part about it is that this single point of success is often something I’ve never actually done before. It’s an imagined point of success. And the hypnotism that characterizes this state is fueled by a conviction that is more like faith than anything else. It’s a faith that this completely imagined point of success actually exists. A faith that I can navigate the swirling fog of confusion and unknown in order to hurl a harpoon into that elusive creature and haul it into the light of now.

When a project is in full swing, these manic states of productivity can be nearly all consuming. Collapsing to sleep, waking up with next steps already lined up in the brain, as though it never stopped and being awake is just a matter of tuning back into the conversation. 

These periods of life are - wonderful. There are few things better than them. So much seems to happen, even though it feels as though it takes too long, and achievement - actually getting something substantial and novel finished and shipped - it feels as though the precious life used up during that time was not wasted. 

The tricky thing is that inducing such periods of manic productivity.. isn’t necessarily a matter of flipping a switch. I’m currently facing a looming need to cast myself wholesale back into such a frenzy of productivity and I find it not unlike the days and hours before taking a very strong psychedelic compound. There’s a foreboding, and a resistance from my body. The same that you feel as a child when approaching the top of a very tall slide or roller coaster. But unlike a psychedelic compound which is simply ingested and guarantees the ride will commence, a flurry of productivity can be tricky to activate if there’s no boss breathing down your neck. It’s a necessity of the imagination. The results might have very real implications for one’s real world life, but if it’s a novel project, it certainly still exists as a figment of imagination. Perhaps at that point it’s a matter of faith more than anything. Can that novel idea actually exist? It all depends on whether you can pull it off.

My suspicion is that it’s like anything else and it’s a matter of momentum. Just start, and do a little bit today. Do a little more tomorrow. And keep that up until sleep is the day’s only bookends, bursting with that project bloating those waking hours. 

So. Here’s to getting a little bit more done. Tomorrow.

MEDITATION DRAFT SESSION 7: THE MIND'S MOVIE

January 2nd, 2023

On Monday Tinkered Thinking releases a draft of a lesson from the forthcoming meditation app, currently called The Tinkered Mind (If you can think of a better name, please reach out. I'm not crazy about the current one, but I'll be damned if I let an imperfect name keep me from developing a good idea.) The rationale here is simply to stave off project stagnation by taking a wish to work with words on a daily basis (Tinkered Thinking Posts) and combine it with adjacent projects. This also gives regular readers a chance to get a preview of what I'm cooking up and to get feedback before the app launches, which is a tactic that has proved extremely useful with other projects unrelated to Tinkered Thinking. 

One further introductory note: The goal of this meditation app is predominantly aimed at helping individuals build a robust daily habit by breaking that habit down and tackling it's consitituent parts one at a time and aiding the process with a new and innovative way of tracking progress, the likes of which has not been seen in other meditation apps or habit tracking apps.

Again, if you have any feedback, please reach out via Twitter  

Session 7: The Mind's Movie

Take a moment to sit and arrange your posture. Maintain a straight back with plenty of space for the abdomen to expand.

Once you’re ready begin breathing with deep exhales. We want a relatively quick inhale and a slow, longer exhale. I’ll count out a few 4 count inhales followed by exhales with a count of 8

Inhale till 4, starting on 

1 - 2 - 3 - 4

hold for a moment and then exhale  

8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 -1

Then..

Inhale again till 4, starting on 

1 - 2 - 3 - 4

hold for a moment and then exhale  

8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 -1

Continue this for a couple more breaths, and feel free to allow the exhales to be as long as you want. And once you are ready let your breathing transition to coherence breathing where inhales and exhales are the same length.

There’s a preconception surrounding meditation that with the practice we are trying to achieve a certain state, like a kind of trance, much like the flow state while engrossed in fulfilling work or perhaps while watching a good movie. While meditation is about cultivating states of mind, it’s much the opposite of this cultural notion of a trance or flow.

Most of normal waking life is far from this state of alert focus. Usually we are lost in thought, either engrossed with some aspect of the past, be it some embarrassment, mistake or replayed memory, or it’s the future we wonder and worry about. We play a near constant movie in our minds which is a never ending montage swirling both past and future together, and it’s only occasionally interrupted by the present for brief periods of time.

A mindfulness practice seeks to interrupt the mind’s movie and expand those moments when the present floods in.

It’s one thing to be fully present for some rare occasion in life, say for the birth of a child, or a child’s graduation, or the last moments of a loved one’s life. These are moments that are so stimulating that it can be difficult NOT to be fully aware of what’s going on in the present. But compare these super-stimulating moments to the boring ones: waiting in line at the bank, or sitting on a bus, or waiting to fall asleep while tossing and turning. During these parts of life we’re usually lost in thought, and the mind’s faucet can seem impossible to turn off. 

And now imagine being as acutely aware of the present and its myriad details during those boring moments of life as if they were as engrossing as the more spectacular moments. 

The quality of our experience has little to do with what is happening to us or around us. Rather, it’s all about how we perceive the present moment, whether we embrace it with the full faculty of our focus and attention or recede from it into memory and imagination.

The practice of mindfulness meditation develops a cognitive muscle to help reengage with the present moment. In a very real sense, it’s an exercise in simply not missing out on your own life.

For some this can maybe sound a little scary: to confront the mind without the comfort of some mindless entertainment or pleasure to drown it out. Some people claim: I have too many thoughts, and I just need to get away from them for a little while.

This kind of sentiment is totally understandable, but the stereotypical strategy for handling it doesn’t actually address the issue, it only pushes it to a side for a little while, which is more like treating the symptom instead of the cause. And in fact, the ability to recognize an overabundance of thought is in itself a first step of mindfulness, which we explored a little in the last session. It’s a recognition of what’s going on with the mind - that there’s a movie in the mind that seems like it won’t end.

But the mental training that comes with a mindfulness practice forms a kind of Pause Button which we can use to put the mind at ease and allow for the present moment to fill our experience.

Now, let’s transition from coherence breathing back to deep exhales, and try to notice any thoughts that pop up as we go through out counts.

Inhale till 4, starting on 

1 - 2 - 3 - 4

hold for a moment and then exhale  

8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 -1

Then..

Inhale again till 4, starting on 

1 - 2 - 3 - 4

hold for a moment and then exhale  

8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 -1

Continue like this for a few more moments while the session ends.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: REBOOT/RENEW

January 1st, 2023

After a month Lucilius woke up. He breathed deeply and sat up, and saw himself in the mirror. He stood and walked toward it until he was standing face-to-face with himself. He looked at the skin of his face. Raise a hand to it and felt how smooth it was. He smiled, watching the change, then moved his expression through a series of extremes: surprise and fright, sadness and delight. All the while watching how his face changed. He laughed and shook his head, amazed. He didn’t look a day older than 16 years old.

He checked out of the facility and started to jog home. He’d gotten a ride to the facility but feeling so limber, with so much energy, it felt as though his body just wanted to run. So he did.

And while he glided along, taking route by the water along the city, his mind drifted back to the work that waited for him. The work he’d been at for many years now. Progress had slowed and slowed until it was clear the demising returns pointed at only one thing: Lucilius wasn’t going to figure out how to finish the project. He knew the subject, the field so well, but as he’d aged and as the project has grown in complexity, his thinking only seemed to solidify. Of course he discovered new and useful data, but there was something he sensed about the mental acrobatics required that finally made him take the plunge. 

This was how most people were handling long term projects, and the method was discovered by accident. It had long been known that the flavor of intelligence a person has changes over time. In youth intelligence is fluid, depending on a powerful short term memory, but as humans age fluid intelligence eventually gives way to crystalized intelligence, one that operates based on a vast array of knowledge and expertise. But anti-aging tech had been undertaken for more obvious reasons: being young - the ultimate products a draw for everyone. 

What people discovered though, was when they returned to their projects and problems after anti-aging therapy, it was often accompanied with incredible breakthroughs. It became clear very quickly what was happening. It wasn’t just the bodies of these people that was going back in age, the very structure of their brains were effected, and the once lost fluid intelligence was regained, but the memories of long study and work were still retained. By regenerating their bodies and minds people were able to see old problems with fresh perspectives, contorting and twisting ideas in ways they’d never considered. 

Many people now, Lucilius included, now used anti-aging and age-forwarding as methods to fast track progress on projects. Depending on what stage a project was in, people were calibrating their biological clock to best fit with the style and flavor of thinking required.

Lucilius was extremely old by this point, but he ran with his body now looking and performing like the 16 year old he once was so many years ago.

It felt good to run, and by the time he was finally home he’d gone over the project in his mind. He didn’t even stop to take a shower, he immediately pulled the project up on holographic digi-screens, raised his hands and started ripping components apart, spinning them, and reassembling. Vast conduits of information and function ceased, severed and rebound before him, and he smiled, finally seeing the solution that he’d been missing.

LEGITIMATE ADVENTURE

December 28th, 2022

Adventure is a cute word. It’s used with children and it’s the stuff of fairy tales and action movies. It’s a quaint concept on the surface, but only because so few people actually take the idea seriously. No, seriously, is your life turning out to be a legitimate adventure?

Well, what would that mean? What are the components of an adventure?When scraped of all potential gravity, it’s something we think of as fun. But is adventure fun all the time? Think of your favorite adventure stories. Was the hero always having a blast? 

Not at all. And this is perhaps the hallmark of adventure: it’s hard. There are challenges so overwhelming that they often put the hero’s very life at risk. Could anything be less superficial?

Modern life is so replete with comfort and safety that the very notion of life being “at risk” is so foreign, so utterly removed from the norm that adventure, as a result, is a concept most people cannot properly fathom. How many times has your life quite literally hung in the balance? Or how about the times when life was truly uncomfortable - not due to stress, like financials and relationships, but when you were so cold you were worried you might not wake up? Or when you literally could not figure out a way out of a situation? Trapped in a glacier? Or met with oncoming trucks in both lanes of a highway?

Likely most people have a moment or two that they can recall when life drew to a pinch in a wholly unexpected and nerve-wracking way. But how many people set up their lives with a goal that requires venturing into risky situations? Certainly law enforcement and military falls into this category, and perhaps the converse of crime life and hard drugs..but outside of these extremes, legitimate adventure can be hard to come by. Short of becoming a homeless ascetic, life is equipped with soft bumpers on all sides. Caution notices that point out absurd safety measures. Danger is practically, literally, outlawed. So what kind of lives does this situation leave us to live. Do we have as many options that were on offer 200 years ago? 500? 10,000?

We were a nomadic species, gathering food and hunting enormous beasts, twisting the raw components of our environment to ingenious advantage. And now we squeeze our souls into the confines of tedious jobs and flimsy relationships.

Part of this can be solved with reframing. We don’t battle the enormous dragon with a sword. Those are analogs for far less flashy items: the dragon is an ethereal force dragging you down, and the sword is often just discipline, perseverance and perhaps a dash of ingenuity required to recognize one of the rare ways to leverage some asymmetric advantage in this cluttered and complex world. The fairy-tale-video-game analogy is best reversed though. It’s better to see life’s obstacles (debt, depressing job, toxic relationships) as the dragon, as the puzzle-temple to solve. The magic of life is lost in its bland tedium and nacring over our eyes with a flashy analog can help rustle up ancient reserves of creative determination. Imagine your life, not by the stale terms we define it with, but as a patch work constellation in the mythic form, the way a child might see it. But even then, don’t forget that legitimate adventure is always on offer. It’s just no longer the default, as it once was when our species was clawing at the face of reality just to survive and a chance to thrive. In fact, the real adventure hidden in and around the normal safe facets of life may in fact be the only way to thrive.